Page 51 of The Tracker's Secret
“Wherever you’ve smelled this before, you can expect death to follow.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do you always have to be so cryptic? Can’t you for once just make sense?”
He huffed, and I thought he might yell at me, but he took a step closer to the vamp and regarded her crumpled body with an upturned lip. “That sour smell, like mothballs in a closet, is the harbinger of death in one who shouldn’t have a semblance of life in the first place.”
“You mean like... she’s sick.”
Eric nodded.
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. That was impossible. Vamps didn’t get sick. Eternal health came with the territory. Their causes of death belonged in a very short list among cutting their heads off, leaving them out in the sun, and stabbing them with pointy, wooden things right in the ticker.
Except, Eric wasn’t the kind to joke—that much I knew about him.
Suddenly, I thought of Josh smiling up at Aaron. He carried the same scent. Did that mean he was sick, too? Questions filled my head, climbing on top of each other, trying to jump to the front of the line. I shook my head, scattering them around and chasing away all possible words.
“She’s dying,” he added. “Slowly and painfully.”
“B-but how is that possible?” I finally managed.
“Raybow,” he answered, his eyes fixed on the pitiful creature.
“You mean that shimmering drink you were serving at your party?” I whispered, afraid my question would sound like an accusation.
“Ihadto serve it. Didn’t really have a choice, but my bartenders had orders to limit it.”
The fact that he had given me an explanation surprised me. He wasn’t the kind to offer much in the way of anything at all, but he was unsettled—I could tell by the way his eyes darted around the room as if searching for answers—and that seemed to have loosened his tongue.
The question was... why would someone like Eric Lone say he “had” to do anything. He didn’t seem like the kind who could be forced into compliance. Though, Damien Wardhadforced him into helping me. Maybe Eric just owed a lot of people a lot of favors.
Fearing he would snap out of his shock before he went back to answering in huffs and puffs, I hurried to ask, “What is raybow? The bartender said that it was only for vampires.”
He cracked his neck and glanced in my direction. His blue eyes were full of coldness again. I shivered and figured he wouldn’t answer my question, but to my surprise he did.
“Raybow, spelled R-H-A-B-O, is a new drug that hit the market a couple of months ago. And yes, it’s only intended for vampires. It kills anyone else.”
R-H-A-B-O. So nothing to do with “rainbow” as I’d imagined at first.
“A vampire drug,” I repeated numbly. It sounded impossible. Drugs didn’t quite affect vampires and shifters. The former were dead, and the latter had metabolisms that ran too high to be truly hindered by intoxicants.
The vampire girl stirred and moaned a little. Eric stepped closer, watching her carefully.
I swallowed hard. “And it really kills vampires?”
My thoughts went to Josh again. Was he dying?
Eric nodded. “To them, it’s much more addictive than heroin is to Stales, and a hundred times deadlier. Once you smell that sourness. It’s already too late.”
I gasped. “Oh, no.”
He peered at me curiously for a moment, but then turned away, without another word.
“Where is this drug coming from?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said dryly.
Bullshit,he’d been serving the poison right here, helping kill this young vamp, so he had to know the source.
Eric stared at a shaft of sunlight that was quickly inching toward the vamp. There was ill intent in his expression. If the sun hit her, she would disappear in a cloud of ashes that he could later vacuum up with his Roomba, leaving no trace of proof that someone had died here.
